Notebook 10.8 +Mac OS Lion+SB 880

[DDM]

I just finish training a group of fellow teachers on the skills in Notebook Level 1. I am very happy to report that all went well. Lion and Notebook 10.8 did very well together. I divided the presentation into 8 small files and used only the already made examples in the Lesson Activity Toolkit instead of risking a crash because of too many flash items. 10.8 seems like it is a very stable version of Notebook. One thing I am noticing is that I do have to orient the board everyday even though it has not been moved. Needless to say I was very pleasantly surprised.

[Ian Berg]

Hello DDM,

 

Thank you for the update about using SMART Notebook 10.8 for Mac with Mac OS Lion 10.7.  I am glad to hear it went well, overall.  However at this time the new operating system from Apple is still not officially supported as mentioned previously in this thread:

http://smartboardrevolution.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2001664%...

 

Regards,

Ian Berg  

Technical Support Specialist

SMART Technologies

www.smarttech.com

[Anne Vereen]

I am going to pull the trigger soon on a MacBook Air for home use but I am waiting to hear that Notebook and Lion play nicely together.   Does anyone know when that announcement might come from the folks at Smart?  I currently use a Mac desktop but haven't installed Lion for the same reason.

[Habib S]

Unfortunately there is no ETA on when we'll officially support MAC OSX Lion at this time. We'll keep you posted once we have some sort of a timeline.

 

Habib Sairi
Software Technical Support

www.smarttech.com

 

SMART Technologies
Extraordinary made simple™

[Adam Denenberg]

I should have checked here first- Been running Notebook 10.8 Mac OS Lion on a Macbook Pro. First week or two playing around, creating Notebook Files fine. Now totally unstable. Crashing like crazy. Uninstalled- Reinstalled trashed prefs. app support files... No Luck. I would stay away from 10.8 on Lion until this update discussed is released. 

Now got to un-install and download 10.7xxx

 

[Gord Peters]

Hi Adam. The crashing problem seems to stem from the new "resume" feature in Lion (where apps will reopen with the same documents as when you last quit them). I've found that disabling that feature via the System Preferences seems to fix the problem.

To disable it, go to System Preferences -> General and uncheck the box labelled "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps".

After that, run Notebook and quit it (in order to clear out the data that the resume feature has previously stored). Once you've done that, you should find Notebook to be much more stable.

[Lloyd Summers]

Great find Gord! I can confirm this is what we've been noticing as well. I sit beside the person who monitors our call volumes from SMART Notebook (I monitor SMART Product drivers) and overheard him testing the resume issue. We knew something was up because we started to receive strange looking crash reports on Lion (the crash reports look like they go to the void, but we really do read them).

We've been putting a lot of time (internally) into testing Lion. Most of the major problems we've made some kind of progress on but we have some quirky Lion problems we have no fix for yet. One thing that has been interesting is Lion ships in 64bit mode where previously Mac shipped in 32bit mode. Which has required a lot of testing.

I'm not sure on release dates yet - everytime we hear one it changes the next day. As soon as we have a commitment we will make sure you guys know. I'm trying to find some time to share or start a Lion thread where we can unofficially (thats what forums are great for) start sharing Lion issues and fixes until a release comes out.

Lloyd

[DDM]

Lloyd,

Have you had any luck w/ Lion and Notebook 10.8 with the orienting? Most of Notebook works pretty well, but I have to reorient at least twice a day. 

Thanks Lloyd!

[Lloyd Summers]

I haven't yet myself, but I have two quick questions. 

 

Have you tried a 9pt orientation? (That is supposed to save to the SC9 controller and not on the PC / Mac.  Might be better). 

 

And what model of SMART interactive Whiteboard are you using?

 

We store the touch points inside a plist file long-term and in the systems RAM temporarily.  Neither should be impacted by Lion.  I just looked at the list of known-lion issues with SMART Product Drivers, and we don't have any orient issues specific to Lion that we have logged yet.  Did this problem only pop up with Lion?  I wouldn't rule out a problem with the controller, permissions to the plist file (its only staying in RAM) or other hardware problem.  But it is possible we just didn't find the orientation problem in our testing yet or a developer found the problem but didn't add it to the bug list.

 

Also, another unofficial quick side note for everyone.  Some of the problems seem to be fixed by Apple in their Service Packs as well.  So, *if* you have go to Lion, make sure to keep on your updates.  My data shows we had 3 SMART Notebook bugs fixed in the last Service Pack (more specifically, they fixed some things with their API which fixed SMART Notebook).

 

Lloyd

[DDM]

Hi Lloyd,

I have the orientation set to the max pts. I have an 880 board.

Thanks

[Lloyd Summers]

880 changes everything! Because it uses DViT anything above a 9pt orientation wont be much help... the data always stores on the pc / mac. It is different because it has two layers - an orientation and a calibration. Let me get back to you in it. I have someone who monitors the 880 who might be able to give us an update.

[lenbom]

Thanks Gord!  Notebook has been crashing 15 seconds after opening for an entire day.  After this fix, it has now been running for 5 min.  I did need to restart in order for the fix to work.  I know that did the trick because I restarted several times today with no changes, and now its working.  Thank you.  Thank you.  This is a life saver for educators who made the mistake of installing notebook 10.8 and lion a little too early.

[Obe Hostetter]

If you want the Restore windows just disabled for Notebook, here are the directions

1. Load up Terminal and enter this in:

defaults write com.smarttech.SMARTProductUpdate NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

and hit return.

2. Enter this command in terminal too

defaults write com.smarttech.ResponseActivation NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

and hit return.

 

Now just Notebook should be exempt from the Restore Windows feature of Lion.